By Thomas Guiney and Henry Yeomans

This article seeks to explain the persistence of high incarceration rates in England and Wales. Building upon recent theoretical work on path dependence, we identify prison population forecasting as a poorly understood positive feedback mechanism that helps to determine the overall scale, scope and reach of the prison estate by connecting capital expenditure decisions with ‘business as usual’ planning cycles that assume considerable policy continuity with the past. We illustrate this point with reference to recent controversies over women's imprisonment where the everyday, routinised working practices of the penal system have played an important role in sustaining prison expansionism long after the initial conditions that fuelled the mid-1990s prison boom have faded. Disrupting these self-fulfilling logics will not be easy and we conclude this article with a call for a more deliberative democratic politics that confronts penal momentum and invites greater consideration of the many possible futures of penal policy.

United Kingdom, Howard Journal of Crime and Justice. 2022, 16pg

By Cat Jones and Clare Lally

England and Wales have the highest per capita prison population in Western Europe. In October 2023, over 88,000 people were imprisoned, in an estate with a maximum capacity of 88,890. This was the highest number recorded. 94% of people in prison are adult men and the adult male prison estate is almost full. The prison estate is operating at 99% of its usable operational capacity and over 60% of prisons are overcrowded. Drivers of the current prison population growth include changes in sentencing policy (including increased sentence lengths). Other factors include remand, recall, reoffending and policing. The number of people given immediate custodial sentences has fallen from 98,044 in 2012, to 67,812 in 2022. This suggests that the prison population increase is not driven by more convictions. Nearing capacity can have negative implications for the safe operation of prisons, and for the health, wellbeing and rehabilitation of people in prison. Government action to avoid exceeding capacity includes expanding the prison estate and releasing some prisoners up to 18 days early. As of December 2023, three relevant bills are progressing through Parliament: the Sentencing Bill 2023, the Criminal Justice Bill 2023, and the Victims and Prisoners Bill 2023. Each contains a range of measures, with some likely to reduce the prison population and others likely to increase it. Various stakeholders have proposed additional policy options, such as the greater use of non-custodial sentences, and interventions to reduce the remand and recall populations. Some experts in this field have highlighted the role of public opinion in relation to sentencing policy and the relationship between prisons and the wider justice system. Evidence suggests that the public generally overestimate crime rates and underestimate sentence lengths, and that better-informed members of the public are less likely to view sentences as lenient. More high-quality research is needed to better understand the drivers of increased sentence length and to evaluate health and rehabilitation programmes in the prison context.  

United Kingdom, Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology. 2024, 33pg

By Andrea Armstrong

This latest report in a series continues to examine deaths among incarcerated people in Louisiana. From 2015 to 2021, at least 1,168 incarcerated people died behind bars in prisons, jails, and youth detention centers across Louisiana. Since our last report analyzing deaths 2015-2019, an additional 375 incarcerated people have died behind bars.

Approximately 86% of known deaths behind bars were of people serving a sentence for conviction of a crime. Deaths of people being held pre-trial, i.e. had not yet had a trial on their criminal charges, constituted 13.44% of all known deaths.

New Orleans, Loyola University College of Law. 2023, 75pg